Ground crew unload luggage from an incoming plane at the Burlington International Airport on Thursday. / GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS

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Free Press Staff Writer

In June 2011, the Airport Commission told the City Council that that fiscal year had been one the “most challenging” in the airport’s history.

The number of people taking a plane from Burlington International Airport was down. Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings Agency, which make judgments on the credit worthiness of airports, had downgraded the airport credit rating. The new $14.5 million garage expansion had been undertaken without a financing plan in place. And the airport’s debt-service coverage ratio — a measure of available revenue to debt — had fallen below recommended levels, one of the weaknesses cited by the rating agencies.

In July, Mayor Miro Weinberger, an airport commissioner for nine years prior to winning election as mayor in March, reported that the airport had turned the corner. “I believe those days are behind us,” he said.

Weinberger then appointed former commission chair Gene Richards, the owner of a local property management company, as interim airport director, and he announced the creation of a committee that would make an objective assessment of the airport’s financial health and plot its long-range strategy.

That committee, chaired by City Councilor and Board of Finance member Karen Paul, I-Ward 6, and interim Chief Administrative Officer Paul Sisson, has now met seven times and plans to finish its work by the end of the year.

Paul and Sisson said the committee has been engaged and has members with backgrounds in transportation and finance. “It’s a great committee,” Paul said.

Broadly speaking, Sisson said, the committee’s charge is to focus on having the airport “surviving and thriving in the 21st century.”

They said a deal will close early in December on a $25 million sale of airport revenue bonds at at rate of 4.423 percent that will lower the airport’s annual debt cost by $300,000 a year for the next five years and then hold it level.

“This bond deal will make it possible to improve our debt-service coverage ratio,” Paul said, noting that measure’s importance to the rating agencies.

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They said the airport’s credit rating will be reassessed by the ratings agencies after the end of the fiscal year next summer.

Findings for the committee remain tentative, but some insights have emerged, in part through a “white paper” completed this spring for “a number of business community members,” committee member Ernie Pomerleau, a Burlington developer, told the full committee at its first meeting in August.

In September, the minutes of the meeting, recorded by Burlington attorney Joe McNeil, reported that Steve Baldwin of Baldwin and Associates, from Albany, described Burlington’s airport as “a vibrant airport that is absolutely essential for successful business to be carried out in the region.”

Baldwin told the committee that Burlington is doing “better than average” for comparable airports in the number of enplanements, but collects less from each passenger ($19) in various fees, than, for example, the $37 per passenger collected by the Harrisburg, Pa., airport. And Baldwin said that even a modest increase in parking fees would be a substantial help to the airport, as cars are typically parked for three to five days.

He also said the Burlington airport could increase fees it charges the airlines.

And Baldwin said Burlington has spent far less on advertising than similar airports. It spent $25,000 of a budgeted $80,000 for marketing in the reporting period prior to the report, while the airport in Manchester, N.H., spends $800,000 annually and the Akron, Ohio, airport has a marketing budget of $1.2 million a year.

Baldwin told the committee that the airport needs to step up its marketing but that the work “must be sophisticated.”

The meeting notes report Baldwin said the airport’s strong points are its accessibility and convenience for customers, “the hardworking nature of its staff” and “its unmet potential,” while its weaknesses are “its lagging business indicators, its lack of experienced leadership, its lack of a marketing ... and strategic plan and its very complicated governance structure.”

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While Burlington’s airport weathered the recession better than some other airports, the Baldwin consultants said, “it will not be able to prosper into the future without a formalized, well-implemented marketing plan” and a strategic plan that includes “a well-thought-out succession plan for airport management.”

In late September, Richards, the interim airport director, told the committee that the airport had cut its annual operating costs by $1 million and had met its debt-coverage ratio.

He said the airport as a whole is generally in good physical condition and it has added $300,000 in revenues by “modernizing its leases and attempting to fill empty space.” He told the committee, too, that the terminal roof was in “terrible condition” and had to be replaced. That work is now being done at a cost of about $750,000.

Richards told the committee that it should improve the airport’s governance structure, that marketing must improve and he said that the airport “cannot afford bad management in the future.”

He reported, however, that many of the airport’s leases had previously been unsigned, even with the airlines, but said that that problem had been addressed and “92 percent” were now signed “and reflective of market rates.”

In late October, the committee heard from the Boyd Group International, based in Evergreen, Colo.

The Boyd consultants noted that available seats at the Burlington airport have fallen by about 10 percent in the last year — an issue that needs to be addressed — a problem that exists at many airports, as available seats in the U.S., they said, fell by 13 percent between 2005 and 2012.

Boyd analysts told the committee that the Burlington airport could benefit by adding routes between Burlington and Atlanta and Burlington and Charlotte.

They emphasized it is crucial for the airport to communicate directly with the airlines and said it is “imperative that BIA identify and establish a communications link with the person in the home office assigned to consider BIA.”

They also emphasized that times are difficult for airlines, which formerly could prosper with “load factors as low as 65 percent” but now regard passenger loads of less than 80 percent “not good.”

“They recommended that BIA get out in front of others with regard to aggressive marketing” and should also try to find new sources of revenue.

A meeting scheduled for Thursday is to be rescheduled because of a mix-up on times. The committee will hear a presentation dealing with a private-public partnership.

Paul and Sisson said that issue as well as regionalization of the airport haven’t been discussed in detail.

They said the committee’s report should be complete by the end of March.